I’ve just spent a frustrating two+ weeks trying to find a solution for why I got a FTP failure when I tried to publish my RapidWeaver websites. I finally solved the issue.
First of all, I want to thank the many (about a dozen) techs and RW enthusiasts who offered solutions. I talked, emailed, or chatted with techs from MacHighway, Apple, YourHead, Spectrum, Arris, and RapidWeaver Community Forum. A RW support tech did finally get back to me, but the problem had been solved.
When I tried to publish, I got an FTP failure, connection offline every time. We looked at the situation from every angle and tried multiple fixes. I learned that FTP problems are common with RapidWeaver–at least according to all the discussions I read in the forums.
Since FTP seemed to be the problem, I researched it.
Now I’m not by any stretch of the imagination knowledgable about how computers work. I certainly have no idea how files get transferred. And even though I read scads of information about them, learned how to check my ports (20 and 21 were closed), and finally reached the tech who could fix the issue, I am still foggy on what we did and why.
But I can tell you this. From what I learned, even though FTP was enabled on my router, the ports were showing up as closed on port check. That’s when I contacted Arris. The tech suggested we set up a forwarding port on my router.
It worked! As of last Friday, the publishing connection works and my files uploaded without a hitch.
Again, thank you to Doug and Scott, who helped me here at RW Community Forum. They’ve also helped others with this problem as I saw when reading through lots of discussions on the FTP issue in the forum. I’ve been using RW over 10 years and this is the first major problem I’ve had.
I also hope this information helps others who find themselves unable to connect to their hosting server due to FTP issues. I think “check ports 20 and 21” to see if they are open would be a good addition to Dan’s FTP article “Follow this fool-proof guide to get your website online.”